The _Hercules_ and her four escorting destroyers (the latter having been scattered during the last few days to various ports and air stations in connection with the inspection being pushed all along the German North Sea coast) were to have rendezvoused at Brunsbüttel by dark of the 10th, in order to be ready to start through the Kiel Canal at daybreak the following morning. At the appointed time, however, only the _Viceroy_, which had pushed through that morning with the "air" party en route to the Zeppelin station at Tondern, was on hand. The _Hercules_, which had got under weigh from Wilhelmshaven during the forenoon, reported that she had been compelled to anchor off the Elbe estuary on account of the thickness of the fog, and the _Verdun_, coming on from her visit to Borkum and Heligoland, had been delayed from a similar cause. The _Vidette_ and _Venetia_, which were helping the "shipping" and "warship" parties get around the harbours of Bremen and Hamburg, signalled that their work was still uncompleted and that they would have to proceed later to Kiel "on their own." Returning to Brunsbüttel from the Tondern visit well along toward midnight, the absence of the _Hercules_ compelled the four of us who had made that arduous journey in the _Viceroy_ (the accommodations in the "V's" appear to be as elastic as the good nature of their officers is boundless), to spend the night aboard, and the impossibility of rejoining our own ships in the morning was responsible for the fact that we continued with her--the first British destroyer to pass through the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal--on to Kiel. It was a passage as memorable as historic. An improving visibility toward morning enabled the _Hercules_ to get under weigh again before daybreak, and in the first grey light of the winter dawn she came nosing past us and on up to the entrance of the canal. At each end of the latter there are two locks--lying side by side--for both "outgoing" and "incoming" ships. The right-side one of the "incoming" pair was reserved for the _Hercules_, while the other was kept clear for the _Regensburg_--flying Admiral Goette's flag--and the two British destroyers. The difference in level between the canal and the waters of the Elbe, varying considerably with the tide, is only a few feet at most, and the locking through, as a consequence, only the matter of minutes. The _Hercules_ and _Regensburg_ were already in their respective locks as the _Viceroy_, with the _Verdun_ half a cable's length astern, came gliding up out of the fog, the former already beginning to show her great bulk above the side as she lifted with the in-pouring water. The attention of the score or so of Germans standing on the wall between the locks was centred, not on the _Hercules_, as one might have expected, but on the _Regensburg_, the most of them being gathered in a gesticulative group abreast the latter's bow. The reason for this we saw presently.